Monday, October 10, 2016

Hillary Clinton now has a growing list of important newspaper endorsements: the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Baltimore Sun, Los Angeles Times, Houston Chronicle, New York Daily News, Dallas Morning News, Cincinnati Enquirer, San Diego Union-Tribute, Arizona Republic. All of those endorsements were made before the Friday bombshell of Trump's taped "locker room" talking about having his way with women, some of which actually amounts to sexual assault. Just in the two days since, the Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch has joined the list. In doing so, it is endorsing a Democrat for the first time in 100 years. Then it was joined by the reddest of red papers in the reddest of red states, Oklahoma, where the Enid News gave an endorsement of Clinton and a denunciation of Trump. The Chicago Sun-Times also joined in with a scathing denunciation of Trump and castigating Republican leaders, saying the party "should drop him cold."Two monthly news and opinion magazines have endorsed Clinton: The Nation and the Atlantic. Only twice before in its 159 year history has the Atlantic made an endorsement: for Abraham Lincoln and for Lyndon Johnson. They seem to do it only when they feel the nation is in danger -- Lincoln, because the nation was coming apart; and Johnson, because they felt, like now, that his opponent (Barry Goldwater) was a serious danger to the nation. In endorsing Clinton, the Atlantic editors wrote that Donald Trump is "the most ostentaciously unqualified major-party candidate in history."The only papers of significance that have endorsed Trump are the New York Post, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch, and the New York Observer, which is owned by Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner who is married to Ivanka. And then . . . there's also his endorsement by the National Enquirer, available at your grocery check-out.On the trivia end -- but, hey, this is the 2016 campaign, so trivia counts -- the Mars, Inc. candy company, maker of Skittles, disavowed Donald Trump, Jr.'s reference to the candy to explain his father's wanting to keep Muslims out. Don, Jr. illustrated his point by saying that, if you had a bowl of Skittles and knew that four of them were poison, you wouldn't want to risk eating any of them, would you?In the 1995 tape of Trump's "locker room talk" about having his way with women, he had just been making lascivious comments about the attractive young woman who was coming to escort him onto the set of the tv show he was about to do. He's heard on the tape saying he'd better talk some Tic Tac's "in case I start kissing" her. Tic Tac, USA has distanced itself, sending out a tweet saying the company "respects all women" and calls such talk and behavior "completely inappropriate and unacceptable."Ralph